Yes, I'd like to know how you gurus do this without the special VW ring
compressing tool shown in the Bentley!  Install the piston in the sleeve and
then attach the assembly to the rod?  This is another reason I've not
bothered with rebuilding a WBX, but I am curious.

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Tom Carchrae
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 3:24 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: off with her heads

Thanks Dennis & Jim.   I had wondered about how hard it actually would be
to put the piston rings back on.  I told my dad, who'd done it with his
aircooled back in the day, and he said, what is the big deal, just pull the
sleeve off.  Not that I don't trust him, but I think his last bus was
around the time I was born (I've seen pics of my pregnant mom helping to
lift out the engine by sitting on a board).  He thought it was a good idea
to pull them off and you could perhaps get some more life/compression by
changing the piston rings.  And yeah, I've seen a few videos on that piston
clip and that looks like a horror.

Jim; you mentioned the sledge earlier - I have a 50lb one in the woodshed,
dangerously close to the van.  I just look at it and mutter, please don't
let it come to that!

Scott/Stuart - thanks for the warnings.  So far, I'm loving the flat engine
layout, but I didn't know that the distributor could drop parts down like
that.  Yeargh.

Tom